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tv   Street Signs  CNBC  October 4, 2012 2:00pm-3:00pm EDT

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unelected people in the world. that and the fed minutes in a few seconds. what some are calling the real american job killer. it is a hot and hotly debated topic. and the dumbest classes that your kid is taking in college. will you not believe what schools are actually teaching these days, mandy. but first, those fed minutes right now with steve leisman. steve? >> brian, thanks very much. these are the minutes from the monumental meeting where the federal reserve decided on open-ended quantitative easing. the minutes show all members but one, the dissenter jeffrey lacker, agreed on quantitative easing. deciding without additional qe, the labor market would not improve given the underlying economic fundamentals. among the reasons for the decision, they looked at the europe crisis saying it polesed economic downside risk. members were concerned with the upcoming u.s. fiscal cliff and a number of participants highlighted the uncertainty of qe. i talk about members in the first part. those are voters. now participants are the fuller
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board. as we'll see in a little bit, this fuller board includes hawks but they're not in the voting rotation right now. some of those object as they say qe probably works best under financial market stress, not under the current conditions. it won't help an economy plagued by uncertainty. it could complicate the tightening of policy when it is time for the fed to tighten and it could raise rates in other sectors. however, most participants believe the risk of qe as detailed there could be managed. now a couple issues here. the effectiveness of the calendar date guidance. remember they extended that into 2015. but there's a big debate on the fed about whether or not this is effective. they worry that the change could be seen as an economic downgrade and not have a positive economic impact. they also said they prefer economic factors to calendar dates. sounds easy, right? no. because they can't agree on whether to use numerical targets and what they should be. they're discussing th ining the
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discussing these numeric targets. that's a lot of information to process. we're going to do what we are calling the fed minutes in a minute. you have 60 seconds to break it down, pull out the nuggets that we need to know about and that are going to move the markets. your time starts now. >> these minutes to my opinion show the changes to the fomc/fed communication strategy are in need of repair. these are changes they made recently. fed is saying it is experimenting with a new way of showing consensus forecast for the outlook of fed policy. there has been confusion between individual forecasts and the policy statement. they need to fix that. that's in the works. second, the fed is also saying calendar date guidance in the state has problems. any change could be seen as a downgrade to the economy. that works against the positive impact the fed is trying to have when it says it will remain easy into late into 2015. and third, the fed gave us little guidance on what happens
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in january. that's what it expires. some time soon, maybe this next meeting in october, the fed is going to have to more explicitly tell markets how to engage the amount of asset purchases relative to incoming data. right now markets are in the dark. >> you have five seconds left! that was amazing, sir. thank you. >> you owned it, our friend. you owned it. stay with us, steve, because we want to know more about the voting members of the fed, the women and men who could just be the most powerful unelected officials in the world. they certainly control america's checkbook. first off, team dub. there's the list, led by the fed chairman himself, ben bernanke. now let's go to the so-called hawks that are a little more aggressive perhaps about inflation. remember, not all of these folks are voting members of the federal reserve. well, there we go. few are members of the hawks. there are actually some
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centrists on the feds. there's the three centrists, the hawks. now let's go into the so-called star chamber with the people who know a little more about this. john hillsenrath, chief economics correspondent at the "wall street journal." robert, the reason we wanted to do this, i don't think americans really know who these women and men are and they are incredibly powerful. what can you tell us about the real operation of the federal reserve? >> well, first of all, it is a mix between economists and basically bank regulators that are on the fomc. economists tend to have stronger conviction as far as economic policies concerned. most of the bank regulator types i think they tend to go along with economic policy. it is rare that they dissent from the chairman and the vice
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chairman. >> john, who are these people? what do they do? how does ben bernanke keep them in line? what are they thinking? that's to john. >> well, so there's 12 presidents of regional fed banks and they're nominated by the boards of those banks and bankers actually have a direct say in nominating them. then there's seven governors who have to go through the confirmation process in the senate. so it is a very peculiar mix that was set up 100 years ago when the fed was founded. i would just make one point to focus in on one of these groups, the hawks that you mentioned. i can't see your screen. i don't know which five you have on that. i would argue that the hawks is smaller than whatever five you have. you would say there are four hawks. they're not as influential as we tend to give them credit for. i think the really important people on the fed right now are these moderates, because they're the ones that bernanke has to work on to keep them on-board.
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what you see in these minutes, they're the ones who shape the policy that the fed announced in september. >> jon, you put out a really good piece on that point. you were saying that essentially bernanke worked the phones, day and night, even over the weekend, really laser focused in on those fence sitters to try to get them to go his own way. co-probably teach a few things to the white house and congress about building consensus here. >> i certainly think so. the chairman was very conscious of the fact that this open ended qe might outlast him. his term is up in january, 2014. he's almost certainly going to be leaving after that. so he needs to have the whole fed on-board with him or as much of it as you can get in order to move this thing forward. i just think it is striking when you see the white house and congress totally unwilling to come up with consensus oriented decisions. and as a result, we have policies on tax policies and health care that could disappear in six months, for all we know.
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i think there is a lesson that congress ought to take from the way the fed chairman operates. >> first of all, i think one of the things we learned, lockhart became a dub as well. we know less. i wonder if jon would chime in on the true feelings of the board members. what we do know is that the board members, i think invariably, vote with the chairman. i can't think of an instance where a member of the board of governors has dissented from the chairman. part of that is by design because the chairman gets to kind of approve or disapprove in a very -- in a way the nominations of the president gets to say, no, i don't like this guy, then can work against that nomination if they don't like the person. but in general he has seven votes with the full board he brings to the table. then he doesn't really that have much work to do to get a consensus. the question is what's a good number. do you really want to come to the market with a change in
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policy. what would it be? 9- 3 or 8-4. you'd really only want to come with one or two dissents. >> the governors in washington are a very interesting group because they don't speak out that much with the exception of janet yellin. what i find in my reporting is that some of them are very outspoken behind the scenes. betsy duke was one person i focused on in a recent story. b bernanke had to work on her. the chairman does not want the governors in washington going against him. paul volcker had a number of reagan appointees go against him in the 1980s. there was a revolt and it was the undoing of paul volcker. >> jon, it's not going against them. maybe robert can speak to this had. the supreme court will vote 5-4 on a case. they don't go 9-0 because the supreme court chairman wants to go a certain way. i want to hear what these people really think. i don't want them to get in line
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with ben bernanke. robert, stlais that a dangerous trend? >> well, i don't think it is a dangerous trend. federal reserve is a very consensus building organization. first, when the meeting starts, there's a staff presentation on the economic outlook. then there's a debate on the economic outlook. then the staff presents the financial picture. and there's a debate on the financial picture, the financial markets. and then the monetary policy directive is being discussed. so it is the third time, the third go-around. and in that process, the chairman really has an opportunity to bring about consensus. and that's what all the chairman have been good at. although i dare say that volcker basically had made up his mind when he walked into a meeting the way he was going to vote. and bernanke strikes me a lot more as a consensus builder, a guy who will go with the flow rather than impose his will on
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the committee. >> i don't get the sense that this is a group that just goes in line with ben bernanke. i mean he faces a lot of push-back in public from the presidents and behind the scenes from the governors. i think we've all seen that he's got to work really hard to get them to go in the direction that he in the end he wants to go. >> low-key persistence obviously wins out in this case. but jon, robert, steve, thank you all very much for weighing in. >> thank you. breaking news now on one of the biggest medicare fraud busts in years. scott cohn's following this one. big numbers. a lot of people involved. >> that's right. among the biggest operations yet in a three-year federal crackdown on medicare and medicaid fraud. this operation today involved raids across the country. 92 people charges, $432 million in fraud. in miami alone, 34 people are charged following raids in multiple locations. including a community mental health clinic. in brooklyn, new york, more than a dozen people arrested in raids
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including one at a medical clinic in the brighton beach section. authorities allege false billing for all kinds of services in these locations, including home health care, durable medical equipment and ambulance service. >> these alleged actions represent an alarming and unacceptable nationwide trend of individuals attempting to exploit federal health care programs and collectively to steal billions in taxpayer dollars purely for personal gain. >> today's arrest in seven cities with the operation hit all nine of a federal task force so-called strike force cities, this crackdown, some funded by the affordable care act, is having some results. more than $4 billion recovered last year alone, officials say. which sounds great until you consider that the total fraud each year could be upwards of $80 billion and maybe even twice that. >> in other words, this is really just the tip of the iceberg. the annoying thing about this health care fraud is, it pushes up health care costs for all of us. right? >> that's right. that's why they are trying to crackdown on this.
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as we've reported on again and again this year, this fee-for-service situation that people can find ways to gain. so they're constantly doing this pay and chase type of thing. they're getting a lot better at analyzing data. that's what this represents. >> what's sad and amazing in this political season. the amount you money you talked about is exponentially more than the amount of revenue that would come to the government if they passed this so-called buffett rule. this dominate all of our political dialogue. this is more expensive. don't talk about it. >> a lot of people have been missing point in terms of what's really important. >> they talk about getting on top of it but we keep seeing this again and again. it is so hard to get -- make even a dent in all of this because there's so much money involved like $800 billion in health care entitlements. you figure 10% of it is fraud. all you can do is do these sort of piecemeal arrests and raids. they're getting better at it but it is a huge, huge problem. >> scott, thank you.
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breaking news in the sports world right now. hockey fans, you're not going to be happy about this one. the nhl has cancel all regular season games through october 24th. because of that continued lockout. it could push back farther. but all hockey games canceled through october 24th. millionaires finding billionaires, mandy, while 46 million are on food stamps and the men and women that actually work at these arenas likely no long ver a job. seema mody has a market flash. >> a bright spot in the transportation sector. we got a positive note out on ryder. sun trust says we don't think ryder's earnings are at risk gin the efficient inventory management. the stock riding higher up roughly 6%. we are about to reveal what our country's real job killer is and how it is getting more deadly in the last few years. and majoring in stupidity. we studied up on some of the dumbest college courses in america and you will not believe
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where that trillion dollars in student loan debt is going. for example, how about this one from the ivy league school, brown university. animals and history. american history around such animals as the horse. the wolf. the buffalo. the passenger pigeon. of which i've never ridden on one. and the pig. honey badger, anybody? >> now that would be a course worth spending lots of money on. for over 60,000 california foster children,
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why has the job market been so weak if recent years? according to our next guest, the reason more employers aren't employ something because it's become more expensive to hire people. the ever expanding safety net of foot stamps and unemployment benefits putting a burden on those of us who are working. casey mulligan argues that point in an op-ed in "the new york times." i admire you for writing what you wrote. because when you addressed this topic in the media, you get slaughtered. right? it is like you're blaming people who are out of work. that's not what you're doing. you're pointing out though that more benefits could be a negative for job creation? >> yeah. helping people is intrinsically good. helping people is good. but it is not free. we've been told the myth that when we help people, it actually helps everybody. that's not true. helping people is not free.
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it takes away incentives. people have -- there's a group of people out there who react to those incentives and spend less and that's been known for a long time. that's nothing new. i didn't invent that. we've known that for a long time. what's new is the huge, huge number and variety of ways we have to help people and therefore the huge number and variety of incentives we've erode. >> historically speaking then david, do you see any holes in casey's argument? >> well, i have to admit i am not an economist. i'm a lawyer so i can't even play an economist on tv. but i do know this -- every morning my alarm clock goes off and then the sun comes up. every morning. alarm:00, and then the sun. that's a correlation. but it doesn't mean that my alarm clock is causing the sun to come up. now what the professor here has posited is a correlation between real wages and the amount of benefits that are out there.
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the problem is, he's using an average instead of a means. for example, we know that in this past recession lower-end jobs were hit disproportionately hard in selected sectors. the data that he shows doesn't reflect that. it is simply an average. i would wonder, what would happen if you simply took a mean analysis and said, how many people are now fouling below the line? i think that would show you in fact that people who have the higher paying jobs suffered less unemployment and that's an explanation that is far different from the one that professor posited. >> casey, how do you respond? >> that's been studied a lot. here's one of the miracles. single people take a lot longer to go back to work than married people. is it somehow that employers are looking at their wedding finger when they decide whether to hire them? i don't think so. what's happened is the safety net is much more available for single people than it is for married people and the result is married people get themselves back to work quicker than single people do. it is okay to help people.
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but let's stop pretending that it is free. let's stop pretending that it doesn't have any depressing effect on the labor market. >> david, there was a study out by the national bureau of economic research a couple of weeks ago, the huffington post among others reported on it, which is that the longer you are out of work, the longer it will take to get you back to work. you lose skills, contacts. don't we have as much of an incentive to figure out a way to, yes, help people, but also help them get back on their feet but not necessarily give them enough that will disincentivize a job search? is. >> absolutely. we talk about folks called the 99ers, people unemployed for more than 99 months. >> many of those people will never go back to work, david. >> what paul krugman and ben bernanke and others have called one of the major economic threats to growth in the united states. we're all in agreement on that. the central premise though that somehow unemployment insurance creates a disincentive to work sort of flies in the face of data from full employment
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periods, because if that were really true, we'd have a lot of people during full employment that would simply prefer to stay on unemployment. or stated another way, if people once went on unemployment they'd stay there because they just liked it. so it assumes that there is a decision by the recipient not to go back to work. that may be true in some instances, but overall it just defies logic and data. let me ask you this -- if you take those same dollars that are paid in unemployment insurance, i've paid into the system, so have you. when you're unemployed you use those dollars to contribute to consumption in the united states. 70% of our economy is consumption. the most in the world. does that not suggest on the other end a growth effect that then translates into demand, then translates into hiring? you can't just take half the equation, in other words. you have to look at the aggregate effect of those payments as one form of a safety net. >> it is a great debate. one of course we could continue but we have to leave it there. casey, david. as you know i lived in singapore for many, many years. almost no safety net because
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they have the extended family instead to look after you. very, very low unemployment. there is a huge motivation to go back to work because you get nothing for being unemployed. while last night's debate may have the rich crying in their dom perignon. here's another class credit for our degree in stupidity. courtesy of northwestern university. art history 101-6. how to write about beautiful things. i think you've learned that from this tease. we're back in two. here's today's "return on retirement." with millions of americans counting on their employer sponsored retirement plans to pay out in the golden years, a significant number of workers are not offered such plans. just how many? the answer when we return.
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today's "return on retirement." how many american work remembers not offered employer sponsored retirement plans?
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nearly 80 million. according to the investment company institute. of those employers who do not response sore a pla plan, priva has a list. here's today's president's question. who is the thee tcheetoh in chi? it took 2,000 individual cheetoh's to create the 3x4 foot portraits. you, fans, can vote for your favorite candidate for a chance to win one of the nominee's cheetoh's face because that will look great on a living room wall. if you are rich, you may be throwing your $500 loafers at the tv because you actually took a bunch of verbal body blows
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from both sides. robert frank -- >> i do own a tv. >> fair enough. what happened last night? >> it all started with president obama's little jab at donald trump and his, well, smallness. during the tax debate, romney said the top earners are really small businesses and they should not be taxed more. obama said they're more like donald trump and they should pay more. >> i'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. high-income people are doing just fine in this economy. they'll do fine whether you are president or i am. >> after the trash talk on donald trump, obama attacked -- >> they're all a bunch of millionaires and billionaires who are small businesses. donned trumps is a small business. i know donald trump doesn't like to think of himself as small anything, but that's how you define small business, if you are getting business income. >> that's the right sound bite. after that sound bite, obama
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then attacked jet owners saying if you have a private jet you should be taxed more. even romney, he's pretty wealthy himself, he refused to come to the support of the wealthy. skip that sound bite i guess. of course, no one should feel sorry for the rich. let's save our tears for poor big bird. but the debate showed both sides are really trying to distance themselves from the 1% even though 1% pay a lot of taxes in this country and of course they are funding a lot of this race and a lot of money for these two candidates. >> twaes geit was genius. romney's move more to the sernd was the best thing he could have done. i wrote months ago why he should support the buffett rule. i know it is painful. i understand a lot of our viewers will be hit by it but it takes it off the board politically. genius political move by romney last night. >> we'll see whether or not it actually works and pays off. >> i agree. >> it only matter if the
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undecideds watched the debate. >> i got a lot of e-mails, why doesn't someone thank the wealthy, they do create a lot of success in this country. but i think for this election, that's where romney needs to go. >> today's useless fact, i heard the guy inside big bird has been the same guy all along and he's close to 80 years old. there you go. old bird as well as big bird. 1 billion served and we're not talking burgers. we're talking about the dumbest college courses in the country. we are calling it stupidity 101. thank you swarthmore college for the history of computer games. some opportunities for design and play may also be involved. we have the story on how courses like this are actually not that rare. stay with us to find out more. smart comes with 8 airbags, 3 a crash management system and the world's only tridion safety cell which can withstand over three and a half tons.
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welcome back to the show. investors bidding up ebay shares today. what is going on? >> the stock up 1.5%. nomura upgrading. say they've been underappreciating the growth drivers and margins at ebay's paypal division.
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paypal now driving 65% of ebay's forward target. that sock soaring year to date. what's happening with google. still working the king side of their mobility motorola transition. interesting stuff going on. >> i'm still trying to understand why they did the deal in the first place. either way, they rooi revised up their bill for job cuts at that motorola mobility unit, also warning perhaps of further restructuring that could result in what they call significant additional charges. separately though, google and five u.s. publishers settled a seven-year-old dispute. they had a suit, they settled it. a lot of google news. i think the stock hit another all-time high today. >> applies materials a max today. on the other side of the board, under a plift pressure. >> stocks down .5%. they'll cut their work force by 6% to 9%. that's 900 to 1,300 jobs.
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last night you heard a lot of talk about solar energy. part of a problem is the slowdown in solar panels, some of their groups suffering. job cuts unfortunately coming at applied materials. >> time warner cable is getting a pop today. so is our own comcast, by the way. >> very nice. it's been a good year to be a cable company. year to date, up 55%. up .7% today. company expected to report stronger margins in q3 as a result of more cost cutting measures. great year to be a cable company. >> amazing management. >> top executives in the world. pandora. that stock, however, is down today despite rocking listenership numbers? is that even a word? >> you're welcome, pandora.
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>> listener numbers. >> five-hour commute home last night because of the traffic on the turnpike. >> that's a lot of listenership. >> unfortunately, fatal accident so everyone was stopped. i listened to pandora for hours. i helped the numbers. >> hello, julia. this is kind of your pet. isn't it? >> yes. great to be here. pandora, just released new september numbers, 58 million active listeners. that means the active listener growth is being a accelerating they're battling to bring down the royalty fees. >> i'm a pandora one user so i actually pay. i got a mass e-mail saying write your congressman that sirius plays 8% to loyalties and they're getting whacked. they're going after congress. >> they want to pay the same fees at satellite radio and
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traditional terrestrial radio. that's what they're lobbying in washington, d.c. >> there's new legislation to try to cut that down to the 8% sirius is paying. wile we have you here, lots of buzz around facebook and a small 1 billion number that's out there? >> 1 billion monthly active users. i want to stress the active because i think that matters. people signed up for facebook a year ago, don't logon regularly. those don't count. i think the more interesting number is the 600 million mobile user number. we should listen to the sound bite that zuckerberg gave our matt lauer this morning. >> well, we do have the most used mobile apps. there's 5 billion people in the world who have phones. we should be able to serve many more people and grow the user base there. >> so, what do you think? >> i think that it's not just how many people are on it. it's what they're doing with it, whether they're -- >> i spoke to sheryl sandberg,
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as you guys know, earlier this week. we ran our interview on monday. she talked about how well their mobile ads are working. the issue is they have 600 million mobile users now. that means their mobile growth is happening faster than their growth of the users in the desktop problem. that's a problem because they're not making as much money on those mobile users as they are on everyone else so they need to continue to invest in making money on mobile. that's something that obviously zuckerberg referred to and also sandburg was talking about. >> you're not on facebook. >> i am not. >> i'm not on facebook. a lot of people either don't logon anymore or have actively deleted their accounts because they just got sick of it. it was boring. it is the same 20% of your friends posting everything. to me, that may be the bigger threat of all for facebook. >> their friends? and their exes. we saw an amazing stat earlier this week saying 5% of all facebook users have used
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facebook to spy -- >> that's the only reason to sign up. >> -- to spy on their exes. >> we'll see what happens. a billion users. if your friends deleted their accounts, they're not being counted in that number which is pretty amazing. zuckerberg said to matt lauer, he wants to go after the rest of the world. anyone who has a cell phone. you no longer have to have access to a computer to be a facebook user. you just have to have a smartphone. >> thank you for joining us today, julia. no doubt mitt romney was on fire last night. well, on fire for mitt romney anyway. he talked about a lot of industries he likes and those stocks are moving today. we're going to dig in to some of those coming up. and continuing our stupid college courses, this one from ohio state. sorry to my brother and sister-in-law. sport for the spectator. mandy, they teach you how to watch sports apparently. >> how to be a spectator. things like football, basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, ice hockey, whatever. like kangaroo racing. curling. you name it, it's there.
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i'm gill griffith. coming up on "closing bell" at the top of the hour. target is going to end all monthly sales updates. which of the retailer is better off shopping for the investors? we'll have the charts on those. plus, his firm manages more money than the fed does. where does blackrock's larry fink put his money to work right now and does he want to become treasury secretary if the president is re-elected? we'll ask him coming up. amazon reportedly getting into commercial learneding. whether that's a red flag warning that the online retailer's profit margins are getting squeezed. all that plus the rallying stocks, and gasoline today, what we see you at the top of the hour. well, crude oil is on a tear today gaining a full 4% on the session and erasing all of yesterday's losses. with the final oil trades, down
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to the pits with sharon epperson. >> we are looking at oil prices at the highs of the session and we're well above the $91 mark. the rally that we've seen today, several factors contributing to it. of course the dollar getting hammered. that's helping many commodities but add to that tensions in syria and turkey and then of course we're keeping our eye on iran. but really you need to look at what happened last night in bay town, texas. refinery exxon refinery there, a fire broke out. that's a 584,000 barrel per day refinery. there's a great deal of concern about what has happened there in a distillate unit and what perhaps will happen to production. we've seen the products on a tear today as a result. looking at gasoline up 5% right now. also distillate fuel, heating oil, rallying. gasoline futures are rallying and unfortunately, we could see higher prices at the pump. back to you. >> sharon, thank you.
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certainly energy a battleground issue in the election. you heard it a lot last night. so, to sort of back us up on what sharon just talked about, here are some of the big moves we are seeing. 4% jump for crude oil. brent crude overseas as well. nat gas up, gasoline -- listen, you don't care about oil prices, america. you care about gas prices. and gas prices averaging now $3.78. we had a sharp eye viewer in san diego tweet us who said gas prices jumped at one station 25 cents overnight. big move there. here are the swing states that are up for grabs. remember, no candidate can win the white house without picking up some of these key states. right? lots of colors here. leaning republican toss-up. you want to focus on the yellow. how much are these states paying at the pump? colorado, ohio, virginia, north carolina, florida, all below the national average. could be good news for president obama. keep those gas prices in the swing states low, mandy.
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>> absolutely. that's what counts. so, mitt romney celebrating today after what many are calling a big victory in last night's debate. the market has been paying very close attention, as you could imagine, to the race with many already pricing in an obama victory. so what does a romney resurgence mean to your money? joining us now, paul hickey, co-founder of the spoke investment group and on the back of the way the people perceived the debate last night, we're seeing a little bit of reaction in certain sectors for the potential after romney win. but i want to know what you think is going to be a winner. >> i think a romney win, one area that would benefit -- medical device companies. there is hope if romney's elected and repeels the affordable care act, then the device tax will be repealed helping out these companies. that tax will pretty much go right down to their bottom line if it is taken away. so that's a nice 3% to 5%
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benef benefit for those companies. >> what about the losers? >> if romney wins, one potential loser is we kept hearing last night how he'll lower the tax rates and simplify the code. by eliminating all these deductions. if the code is simplified, you could see accountants and online tax preparers hurt such as an h and r block as more americans theoretically in a simpler tax code would be able to file their own taxes. a loser under it would be in some of these health care stocks, this is romney being elected, all the companies that benefited from the affordable care act and the increased coverage. pbms would be hurt. it is like an express script, perhaps. or a hospital company. those would be also negatively impacted. >> what about anything with the color green? in other words, environmentally friendly, renewable energy related stocks, things like that under a romney win. >> there's been -- president obama was very open to
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alternative energy and it was supposed to help some of these alternative companies like solar. but first solar was a company that was supposed to benefit under president obama but it's just been hurt. it hasn't had a good year at all. it's just been down way off its highs. i wouldn't focus too much there. again the point for solar, these things aren't always as they seem so you don't want to read too much into it. just play things how they turn out. >> how they turn out. they will turn out. we'll just have to wait and see. thank you so much, paul hickey. seema mody with a market flash. >> remember that show "deal or no deal"? this is a no deal. 3m has scrapped its plan to buy avery densnisdennison's busines. 3m trading slightly higher. avery down 3%.
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the who sang about teenage wasteland. your next guest says america's facing an academic wasteland, teaching our kids basically useless stuff at very expensive colleges. case in foinpoint, new york university is offering a class called the thingliness of things. really? sounds like a dr. seuss book. we'll debate that when street signs returns. ♪ [ male announcer ] its lightweight construction makes it nimble... ♪ its road gripping performance makes it a cadillac. introducing the all-new cadillac xts. available with advanced haldex all-wheel drive. [ engine revving ] it's bringing the future forward. boring. boring. [ jack ] after lauren broke up with me,
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the orthopedic device maker saying an unusual number of high customers turned to competitors. still up, though, here today. >> well, smoke them if you got them. phillip morris is today's sunshine stock. it's currently trading at all-time high levels not seen since a spinoff back in 2008. so much for all those ads trying to get us so stop smoking. well, we have been showing you all our ridiculous courses at america's college. here's another one for you. kr
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critical theory in social justice in stupidity. yes, it's the real name of a course at occidental college. by the way, cost of that school is $57,000 a year. andy, we just wanted to pluck out some of these classes. we're not picking on any of these schools. my school, i'm sure mandy's school, could also find ridiculous classes. why are we teaching this stuff? >> you know, i can't for the life of me figure it out. there's a huge disconnect between what colleges are teaching and what companies want in future hires. i mean, half of college graduates under the age of 25 don't have jobs or are underemployed. that's 1.5 million kids who can't get jobs when there's 3.8 million job openings. these colleges are doing a disservice for their students. >> they really are. you know what? we talked to it a lot of
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business owners. we put them on the spot. we say, are you hiring? they often say, we would like to hire, but we cannot find people with the skills that match what we need here at our business. we can blame outsourcing. we can blame the financial crisis. at the end of the day, it's quite often a mismatch in terms of what we're teaching. what should they be teaching that they're not? >> the knee jerk reaction is science and math. in fact, president obama last night said, hey, i'm going to hire 100,000 more science and math teachers. great, but that's not right. you know, i did some surfing around. i hope you have the graphic. i found the admission test to m.i.t. it looks like the same s.a.t. or a.c.t. test we all took in a algebra and high school. if you look at the date on the test, it's from 1869. what was it back then they wanted kids who knew how to do
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equations? in 1870, the brooklyn bridge started construction. we're still teaching, 140 years later, the same curriculum to use to build bridges. we don't build bridges anymore. >> they probably adjusted their curriculum to meet demand. it's a shocking concept, right? >> right. >> i guess if i'm hearing you right, to mandy's point, we should be teaching software programming, health care, right? not math for trees and the sport of spectating, whatever the hell that was. >> all the above. you know, the thing in the '50s and '60s, it was about languages. we all wanted our children to aspire to be translators at the u.n. or something. so we all have to take french or spanish or god knows what in high school. colleges still have multiyear language requirements. my son, you know, worked his butt off, is at a great institution, and he has to take french or spanish. he's trying to substitute that
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with a computer science class. the internet is in english. google translate will do everything else. they said, no, you're taking the language. they wouldn't let him out of it. that's the biggest problem we have. we have to start teaching kids, you know, java. don't senator college or even in high school. start in seventh grade. that's where both genders will pick up on this. this is what employees want to hire. >> you are spot on. hopefully some people are listening. always a pleasure. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> it is mystery quote time after the break. we're going to tell you the very big name who is saying short apple now. he's someone every cnbc viewer knows. it isn't mr. margin. mr. margin? don't be modest, bob. you found a better way to pack a bowling ball. that was ups. and who called ups? you did, bob. i just asked a question. it takes a long time to pack a bowling ball. the last guy pitched more ball packers. but you... you consulted ups. you found a better way. that's logistics.
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because we know how important cash flow is to reaching your goals. pnc bank. for the achiever in you. mr. doom and gloom took on gym radiolo jim rogers today directly on "futures now." jackie deangelis is the host. she joins us now. >> this was a great interview, guys. they went head to head. for those who did tune in for "futures now," they saw the first ever on cnbc, mr. gloom and doom and jim rogers head to head. the first headline, faber hates apple. >> in general, optimism of investors and the headlines and everybody is an apple fan.
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everybody needs an apple device. i think, yeah, probably the stock has peaked out. >> all right. we covered a lot more as well, but then things took a bit of a wild turn. rogers asked faber about his nocturnal habits. >> i was in bangkok last night myself. i didn't see you at the disco. which one did you go to? >> i go to lower class discos. >> all right. be sure to check out the full interview at futuresnow.cnbc.com. it was wild. it was a good time. you never know what can happen. >> that is probably the best tease for your show. we're going to all tune in. thank you very much. okay. well, make sure you tune in next week tuesday and thursday 1:00 p.m. eastern for the live stream of "futures now." of course, you never know what's going to happen. >> as soon as that's over, tune into this show, which is

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